Richard Horton is the Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet. He qualified in physiology and medicine with honors from the University of Birmingham in 1986. He joined The Lancet in 1990, moving to New York as the North American Editor in 1993. In 2016, he chaired the Expert Group for the High Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, convened by Presidents Hollande of France and Zuma of South Africa. From 2011 to 2015, he was the Co-Chair of the United Nations’ independent Expert Review Group on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health. In 2011, he was elected a Foreign Associate of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine and, in 2015, he received the Friendship Award from the Government of China. In 2019 he was awarded the World Health Organization Director-General’s Health Leaders Award for outstanding leadership in global health and the Roux Prize in recognition of innovation in the application of global health evidence. He now works to develop the idea of planetary health—the health of human civilisations and the ecosystems on which they depend. In 2020, he published ‘The COVID-19 Catastrophe: What’s Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again’. A revised, updated, and expanded second edition was published in 2021.